Preservation Hall Jazz Band Inducted into the National Recording Registry

It is our great pleasure and honor to share the news that The Preservation Hall Jazz Band has been officially inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The Preservation Hall Recordings album New Orleans’ Sweet Emma and her Preservation Hall Jazz Band was selected as an official inductee in the 2014 annual list of 25 recordings that are deemed “culturally, historically, aesthetically significant.”

About the album the registry said, “This 1964 offering by seven veterans of New Orleans jazz, before a live Minneapolis audience, well illustrates the credo of music spoken simply—play the melody from the heart and elaborate with care.” They also described the band’s music as “simple, direct and majestic.”

Other selections this year include Radiohead, The Doors, and Joan Baez among others. These additions bring the total number of recordings on the registry to 425.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band derives its name from Preservation Hall, the venerable music venue located in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe. The band has traveled worldwide spreading their mission to nurture and perpetuate the art form of New Orleans Jazz. Whether performing at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, for British Royalty or the King of Thailand, this music embodies a joyful, timeless spirit. Under the auspices of current director, Ben Jaffe, the son of founders Allan and Sandra, Preservation Hall continues with a deep reverence and consciousness of its greatest attributes in the modern day as a venue, band, and record label.

The PHJB began touring in 1963 and for many years there were several bands successfully touring under the name Preservation Hall. Many of the band's charter members performed with the pioneers who invented jazz in the early twentieth century including Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bunk Johnson. Band leaders over the band's history include the brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey, husband and wife Billie and De De Pierce, famed pianist Sweet Emma Barrett, and in the modern day Wendell and John Brunious.

These founding artists and dozens of others passed on the lessons of their music to a younger generation who now follow in their footsteps like the current lineup. With a live show that is nothing short of an absolutely must-see, be sure to check out the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as they make their way across the United States this spring and summer. A full list of tour dates can be found below.

Current Lineup:

Ben Jaffe - Creative Director and Tuba

Mark Braud - Trumpet and Vocals

Charlie Gabriel - Clarinet and Vocals

Clint Maedgen - Saxophone and Vocals

Joe Lastie, Jr. - Drums

Rickie Monie - Piano

Ronell Johnson - Tuba, Trombone, and Vocals

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is a New Orleans Jazz Band, NOT a Dixieland Jazz Band. While both music styles originated in New Orleans in and around the same time, the connotations and history are radically different. “Dixie’s Land” and “Dixie” were songs to come out of the late 19th Century, and were popular folk songs that came out of the blackface minstrelsy. The words were written in comic, and exaggerated versions of the African American Vernacular, and tell the story of a freed black slave pining for the plantation of his birth. It is because of these significantly hateful, and racist roots, that the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is opposed to any reference to “Dixie” in describing their music, and heritage.